Author’s note: I originally
wrote this profile for the book Ball of Confusion:
race, basketball and the chaos of 1972. It ended up on the editor’s cut floor –
not relevant enough for the narrative. However, I was told, this would make a
great book on its own. I met Coach Irons in 2008 through former Mizzou
All-American and NFL All-Pro Demetrious Johnson as I was writing the book Riding the Storm Out: a year of inner
city high school football. Along with legendary Jefferson City High School football
Coach Pete Atkins, Irons is the most successful and controversial coach in the
history of Missouri high school sports.
2008 was a low point in Irons life and he asked that we not speak on the
record. In 2019, he shared a city office with former NBA player Hercle Ivy, a
main character in the book Ball of
Confusion. Despite repeated
attempts, I was never not able to secure an interview with the enigmatic Irons,
nor his successful son.
We love a good
comeback story. Like Shakespeare's Borachio, the roller coaster loyalty of a
fickle fan base will "condemn into everlasting redemption," our
sports heroes. Losing demands redemption and shortcomings are absolved only by
winning a championship.
 |
| The Lion of Cass Avenue |
Joe Paterno. Tiger Woods. Sammie
Sosa. Mark McGwire. Lance Armstrong. To quote S.L. Price, “each of them rode on
the side of Angels – until he didn’t.”
In 2006, the fall from grace of a
legendary high school basketball coach was a top news story on the St. Louis
north side.
No story told of St. Louis Public
High League basketball can be complete without giving heed to its most
successful, respected and feared leader, the Lion of Cass Ave, Vashon’s Coach
Floyd Irons. A 1964 Vashon graduate and all-conference guard on the hardwood
and quarterback on the gridiron, Irons returned to the “V” in 1974 to coach in
his hometown north side neighborhood. He was now the head basketball coach of
the tradition-laden Vashon Wolverines.
Irons was one of the few whose
reputation was so immense that he was known, at least in St. Louis, by his
first name only. Michael. Madonna. Pele. LeBron. Floyd.
An often-told story when speaking
of a young Irons’ rise to power is when his mother met head-on on her front
porch gang members who had come to her house to recruit her teenage son, Floyd.
Mom swished them away from her home with a broom in one hand and a shotgun in
the other, so the story goes. No sir, her boy Floyd had too much potential to
be involved with any such nonsense. Word hit the streets; Floyd was off limits.
The neighborhood already had enough leeches, enough drunks and enough druggies.
You Floyd, you come back and make us proud, was the message sent. For sure,
Irons did. But as there always seems to be with our heroes, there was a human
side of Irons, not always the perfect leader and molder of young men.
Irons attended and graduated from
Oklahoma’s Lawton University and returned to St. Louis to teach and coach. In
1983, Irons won the first of many state titles with the Wolverines. With his
take no prisoners’ style, he created a dynasty. A long and bumpy but historical
successful era for St. Louis high school athletics had begun.
 |
| 2019 Antonio Irons |
Irons thrived on controversy.
Bumptiously to a fault, he diligently built his boys basketball team at the
north side school into a 30-year dynasty, storming to 11 state titles won along
the way. From late 1974 to 2006, Irons’ confrontational approach made him both
a revered and feared man in the circle of St. Louis area high school athletics.
Despite his many St. Louis area critics, both in the city and the county
suburban high schools, Irons remained a constant and defiant voice; a man
viewed by many north side residents as a local hero. His success at the poor
school was nothing short of amazing, highlighted by over 800 wins. Admirers and
critics - and there was an abundance of both - saw Irons as either a proud and
talented coach who fought for the black community, or as a bully and cheater,
always ready to play the “race card” to his advantage when his methods were
challenged.
“I worked for him some when I was
at the “V,” said former Wolverines’ Assistant Football Coach George Simmons, he
himself a veteran of over 40 years of PHL service. “He was always cool with
me,” said Simmons. “But watch out if you crossed him.”
What Simmons recalled most
clearly was Irons’ skills as a teacher. “I loved to watch his teams’ practice.
Total organization and total discipline. Floyd’s practices were a thing of
beauty. Everybody was involved. Everybody moving. No wasted energy. Say what
you want about the man, but he could coach. You might not like the dude but
give him his due. He could coach.”
In 1990, at the State Tournament
in Columbia, Irons pulled his team off the floor and refused to play the last
seconds of a semifinal game against Raytown South. At the time of his protest,
his team trailed by nine points with four seconds left to play. Irons was upset with the officiating and
commented after the game to the media that he thought the state association had
a vendetta against him. Irons told the state the Wolverines were packing up
that night and in what would be an unprecedented move, heading back to St.
Louis, forfeiting the next day’s scheduled third place game.
Because the stage for Irons' behavior was the state tournament, his actions were witnessed by the complete
MSHSAA Board of Directors. An emergency meeting was called for the next morning
and the board voted unanimously to suspend Irons from the next day’s game and
to ban him from being present in the building. MSHSAA said it would hold off on
further sanctions until Vashon officials could review the case and decide if
further punishment was justified. Irons told the board not to bother, as
principal of Vashon High School he was deciding now that no further punishment
would be leveled against himself or Vashon. Irons backed down from his
forfeiture threat and the game was played without his presence. Vashon defeated
Springfield Glendale High School.
 |
| 2005: USA #1 Rank in the Nation |
In fall of 1990, MSHSAA and
Vashon reached an agreement of compromise. The state demanded that the SLPS
appoint someone above Irons, as principal, to oversee and administrate his
actions as coach, eliminating an obvious conflict of interest. Vashon agreed.
What they would not do was to issue a public reprimand of Irons for his actions
at the game. The district claimed he had justifiable reasons to pull his team
from the floor due to the poor quality of the game’s officiating. MSHSAA knew
that to take on Irons in a public spitting match and demand his public censure
would not be well taken by Vashon supporters and would further strain already
poor relations between the inner-city black school and MSHSAA. To the chagrin
of many St. Louis area school officials, MSHSAA rescinded its demand of a
reprimand of Irons. Both sides agreed to drop their guns and walk away from what
had the potential to become a racially divisive issue between the all black
school and its leaders and the all-white MSHSAA Board of Directors.
In 2003, Irons took on an added
job as the head coach of a local semi-pro team, the St. Louis Skyhawks. The member
of the United States Basketball League played its schedule in the spring and
summer, after Vashon’s season was over. The team’s owners had paid a $300,000
franchise fee to join the USBL. Associating Irons with the team, the owners
felt, would instantly generate credibility and status in the city’s basketball
community.
In a game played in Cedar Rapids,
IA, on May 11, 2004, Irons pulled his team from the floor in the second period
and refused to finish the game. He felt the officiating was unfair to his team.
The league immediately suspended Irons from further coaching the team. There
was no appeal. The public relations director for the league, Dennis Truax, said
Irons behavior was totally unacceptable and added, “I understand this is not
the first time he has done something like this.” The Skyhawks record at the
time was 1 win and 9 losses. “This has serious repercussions,” said Truax. “We
had over 2400 fans we have to refund their money. This cannot be tolerated.
This was nothing but a high school coach who was mad because he did not get his
way, so he quit and went home. This makes the entire league look very bad. This
is our 19th year and we have never had a forfeit until this.”
The suspension, Truax said, was
indefinite. “It could be lifted today, and it might be lifted by Tuesday and it
might be lifted in the year 2020. We will see.” Irons never coached the
Skyhawks again.
A few high-profile coaches have
risked public scorn to tell the world of their moral beliefs. Former legendary
University of North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith was one. An outspoken
critic of the death penalty, Smith took his players on a field trip to a prison
where they were taken under heavy guard and escorted to death row. They met face to face condemned inmates in
their cells. In 1998, the night before a North Carolina state execution, Smith
phoned the condemned man, John Nolan Thomas, Jr., to reassure him he was not
forgotten, offering to him the coaches’ heartfelt words of comfort and
redemption. Thomas told Smith, "I'll be cheering for the Tar Heels."
That a larger than life figure, as Smith was in North Carolina, had accepted
him without judgment gave Thomas’ peace, his family told the media after his
death. The convict’s spiritual advisor credited the nation’s all-time
winningest college basketball coach’s sincerity as the catalyst for the often-
troubled Thomas’ acceptance of his fate and validated his belief of an
impending salvation.
Like Smith, with no fear of
repercussions from the powerful, Irons had for years thrown snowballs at top
hats. He was more than willing to use his political clout and image of his
Wolverine players to protest what he saw as racial and social inequities. Once,
he pulled his players out of their weekday’s classes to transport them to protest
at a St. Louis County school where a black student said she had been called a
racial slur on a school bus. Some applauded him teaching his players the
importance of taking a stance for justice. Detractors charged he was a
grandstander manipulating his captive roster of mere children for his own
standing in the black community.
Irons’ Wolverines were not only
the scourge of St. Louis area high school basketball, but in time, the entire
nation. By the dawn of a new century, the Wolverines were viewed as one of the
top programs in the United States. In 2005, Vashon rose to the lofty perch of
the USA Today’s #1 ranked high school basketball team in America, an amazing
accomplishment for a 21st century PHL team. While the rest of the league was a
local embarrassment, Irons’ teams were now known and respected nationwide.
That season, 2005, would prove to
be a high point in Irons’ 30-year iron clad control over Vashon basketball.
When the subsequent fall of Irons and the “V” came, his many enemies and critics
would show no mercy.
 |
| Five state titles by age 33 |
The roof caving in came quickly,
and the fall was swift and severe. By the summer of 2007, Irons’ world was
collapsing under the weight of a federal criminal investigation for a realty
scam that would eventually lead to his imprisonment. The last proud and deviant
voice of the PHL would finally be silenced.
Accusations of illegal recruiting
of players to Vashon who lived in other districts had dogged Irons for years.
Many of his legion of supporters in the black community claimed that if Irons
was recruiting, then after years of white county coaches raiding city talent
under the guise of the desegregation busing program, Irons was simply reversing
the tables by going to the county and illegally recruiting their black stars to
move to the city and play for Vashon. As would later be learned, many of his
Vashon players didn’t even bother to move to the city before they enrolled at
Vashon.
“You played for the “V” and
Floyd, you were special,” said George Simmons. “Only time I can ever remember
kids lying about where they lived to get into a city school. Kids in the city
lie all the time about living in the county to go to the county schools, but
with Floyd, it was just the opposite. To play for Vashon was the greatest honor
for a black high school basketball player in the city. That is how powerful
Floyd and Vashon basketball had become. If you wore the uniform of the “V,” you
were a god.”
In 2002, a candid as always Irons
gave the St. Louis Riverfront Times weekly newspaper his take on who needed who
in the St. Louis area high school athletic world and the importance of the city
black athlete to the winning programs in the white county schools. "If I
had 10,000 white students coming into black schools here, I can see how,
football-wise, they might have helped, just in numbers. But would they have
helped as much as we've helped them? Let me put it this way: They wouldn't have
helped my basketball program.”
Irons’ cockiness during the heady
days of 2002 would not last. In four -years it would be another Riverfront
Times expose that started the investigation that would eventually lead to his
downfall and imprisonment on federal fraud and conspiracy charges, a fate -
depending upon one’s view of the controversial Irons – that was either Greek
tragedy or poetic justice.
The Riverfront Times had been a
unique part of the St. Louis media landscape since its founding in 1983. At
first, viewed as a gonzo type weekly known more for a pattern of shooting from
the hip conjuncture than fact, by 2006, the RFT had drastically altered it’s
standing within mainstream journalism. Perhaps its finest investigating hour
was earned in a stinging, hard hitting and critically acclaimed article
published in November 2006, titled Basketball by the Book. The RFT’s
research documented one smoking gun
after another that provided substantiation to what many area coaches had
complained about for years: that Irons had illegally enticed talented young
black basketball players who did not live in Vashon’s district, to transfer to
the city school and become a part of the almost cult-like status his teams had
attained. The lure of the “V” was strong as player after player, many from the
same county district’s that had been raiding city talent for 25 years, found
their way to Irons’ mythical program.
The RFT article first paid
tribute to Irons: “The gymnasium at Vashon bears Irons' name — testament to a
community icon who has been not only a coach, but a father figure to many of
his players, visiting them at home and helping out financially when the need
arose.”
Then the RFT dropped a
bombshell. The Times claimed that its
research showed that the 2004 State Champion Vashon Wolverines had no less than
seven players who were in violation of MSHSAA by-laws in regard to residence
and/or recruiting. Then a following shot
that registered a 10 on the Richter Scale throughout the St. Louis sports
scene: “a three-month Riverfront Times investigation has revealed that Vashon
apparently fielded teams with at least three ineligible players — and sometimes
as many as ten — each and every season dating back to the 1998-'99 school year.”
The article sent shock waves
through local basketball circles. Some were amazed at the depth of the
deception at Vashon, and wondered how many city school administrators had been
involved in a possible conspiracy to protect Irons and Vashon over the years;
while others paid tribute and expressed admiration to the apparent air tight
investigation that the Times had executed; and that someone had finally showed
the gumption and fortitude to stand up to the bullying Irons.
The publishing of the November 2006
article was not the beginning of Irons’ problems. That previous summer, Irons
had been unrepentantly and unceremoniously fired by the St. Louis School Board
from his positions of district- wide Athletic Director of the PHL and the coach
of the Vashon Boys Basketball team. The move came two months after Irons’ team
had won the 2006 state championship, his 10th at the “V.” The fallout the next
day after Iron’s dismissal was rollicking. Then Superintendent, Greg Williams,
who did not favor Irons’ ouster and publicly protested it, was himself fired.
The School Board claimed that an
internal investigation had revealed missing funds from the Vashon basketball
program totaling tens of thousands of dollars. It was also alleged that several
years before, Irons had assaulted a special education student at Vashon. The
Social Services investigator assigned to the case recommended that Irons be
charged with a felony. But friends in high places, both in the City Prosecutors
Office and the School District, had allegedly helped sweep the incident under
the rug. The young man and his family had filed a civil suit against Irons and
the SLPS. Mere days before the case was to be heard in court, the young man was
found murdered. The apparent homicide has never been solved. There has never
been anyone in law enforcement alleging any involvement by Irons in the murder.
In 2006, the most decorated
basketball coach in state history now found himself without a team to coach,
relegated by Board of Education reassignment to the role of a Junior High
Social Studies Teacher. In August of 2006, Irons informed the Board he was
going on extended sick leave and never did report to his junior high classroom.
At the end of the 2006-2007 school year, Irons officially retired.
Irons and his large group of followers
did not take the board action lightly, and their response was swift and loud.
Threats of discrimination lawsuits, protesting and picketing at the Board of
Education President’s residence and threats to air revelations about “where the
skeletons are hid” in the St. Louis Public School System were publicly levied
by irate Irons supporters. It was obvious Irons had friends in high places. The
help of US Congressman William “Lacy” Clay was soon at Irons’ disposal. When it was first reported that Irons was
under investigation and before he was removed as Vashon coach, Clay wrote to
the SLPS School Board that: "I can assure you that the political
leadership of this community, at all levels, will not stand by quietly while a
man who has devoted his entire adult life to helping young people is treated in
this intolerable manner."
Despite such threats, all efforts
to save Irons’ job at Vashon were to no avail. When practice began that fall,
for the first time in over 30 years, the mighty Wolverines had a new leader;
Anthony Bonner, ironically Irons’ greatest Vashon player ever. The former Irons
protégée, a St. Louis University record setter and National Basketball
Association star, was now in charge at Vashon.
And Irons’ problems would soon grow
in magnitude.
That fall, it was revealed that
Irons and several associates were under an FBI investigation for real estate
fraud and that the feds had subpoenaed all district correspondence involving
Irons, including a seizure and search of Irons’ school computer. As rumors
spread about Irons legal problems, his world quickly spun out of control.
In September of 2007, Irons pled
guilty to one count of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud for his role in
the real estate scam.
In March 2008, Irons was sentenced
to one year in federal prison and ordered to pay back $650,000. By state law,
as a convicted felon, Irons’ teaching certificate was revoked; making it
impossible for him to ever coach again in a Missouri public high school. He had
originally faced up to 30 years in prison and fines of up to one million
dollars.
Still, Irons had one more piper
to pay. He had agreed, as a part of his plea bargain to the Federal charges to
tell all he knew about illegal recruiting, both at Vashon and other St. Louis
area high schools. Under court order, he met with MSHSAA and gave testimony as
to both his, and others, roles in the illegal recruiting of high school
athletes. It was a day Irons’ critics had long hoped to see. Facing additional
years of federal prison time- and possible charges of perjury - if not candid
and truthful under oath, Irons was finally ready to “sing.”
Many state coaches and school
officials for years had complained that Irons and Vashon was a “sacred cow” and
that MSHSAA did not have the backbone or the political courage to investigate
the city school. It was felt around the state that MSHSAA lived in constant
fear of Irons and his well-known use of the “race card” defense when challenged
or questioned about activities at the “V.” Despite the many years of rumored
recruiting violations, the feeling was that MSHSAA did not want to endure the
charges of racism which would inevitably come from Irons and his supporters, if
Vashon was ever brought to task about eligibility violations.
Now, finally, the long-awaited
day of reckoning between Irons and MSHSAA was at hand. The outcome of the
information gleaned at this summit would leave most around the state angry at a
state athletic board now viewed as refusing to investigate Vashon when they
(MSHSAA) had, for years, in their possession obvious probable cause that rules
were being broken on a frequent and blatant basis by a school that had built a
nationally respected dynasty based on a now perceived foundation of cheating.
The real jaw-dropper was the
revelation that Irons admitted paying between $25,000 and $30,000 to house,
feed, provide a car and a housekeeper for two 6’8 brothers, Bobby and Johnny
Hill. The two, who graduated from Vashon in 2005 and 2006 respectively, had
transferred to Vashon from Alton, IL High School. A follow up investigation by
the media found that officials at Alton High School had traveled to Missouri at
the time of the Hills leaving Alton for Vashon, and met with MSHSAA director
Becky Oakes, giving her what they felt was proof positive that Irons had broken
the rules in securing the playing services of the Hills. Oakes later commented
that since Alton had not filed an official complaint that there was nothing her
association could do in the way of an investigation of Vashon. Alton officials
subsequently claimed they were never told anything about filing a complaint.
Furthermore, since they were from another state, MSHSAA by-laws would not allow
for such action by the Illinois school officials.
Alton officials stated that they
left the meeting with Oakes under the assumption that she had heard their complaints,
saw their documenting proof, and that her organization would do a thorough
investigation of the matter. As it turned out, nothing could have been farther
from the truth, and Vashon continued to rack up state titles based on illegal
recruiting.
The Hills’ affair became a public
relations nightmare for MSHSAA, with many coaches and school officials saying,
“I told you so.” What had been rumored and groused about for years, that MSHSAA
would nail a small rural district - which could not afford high priced
litigation - to the wall for a minor violation; but would cower and look the
other way when obvious violations were occurring at Vashon, many now felt had
been proven as fact.
The anger of MSHSAA’s rank and
file members was aroused by the now strongly supported theory that the state’s
lack of action against Vashon was rooted in a fear of charges of racism from
Irons and his vocal supporters. Several years earlier, the Suburban North
Athletic Directors, representing schools located in North St. Louis County,
many of them with predominantly African-American enrollments and schools from
which several questionable Vashon transfers had occurred; did file a recruiting
complaint against Vashon. The complaint was withdrawn when a St. Louis black
newspaper penned an editorial accusing the county Athletic Directors, many
themselves black, of racism.
Irons will remain always a
controversial figure and a lightning rod for St. Louis area sports fans. Was he
a proud black man who, against all odds, fought to build a basketball dynasty
that gave at least a glimmer of hope to a downtrodden city school system that
had seen its best students and athletes taken away for the glory of white
suburban districts? Had he fought the powerful suburban districts and beat them
at their own game; a man who refused to accept second best for his players, his
school and his neighborhood? Or was he merely a bully, always willing to cry
racism every time he was accused of not playing by the rules?
Whether Irons’ methods were noble
in intent or corrupt by plan; there is no question that for years the Vashon
Wolverines Basketball team stood alone as a source of pride for a success
starved Public High League. The rally cry of “the V get ready to Roll,”
announced the arrival of the proud Wolverines and their legions of supporters
and followers. Chanted with an aggressive tone, it became the symbolic battle
cry of what many non-city residents viewed as the aggressiveness and the danger
of Irons’ teams and its imitating supporters. But in all fairness, for a
community stripped of all other sources of athletic success, Irons and his
teams were the pride of the city, a last glimmer of hope. With Irons and his
juggernaut teams to grasp on to, the glory days of PHL athletics still lived.
However, by 2008, their leader had been publicly disgraced and carted off to a
Federal Prison. The PHL athletic teams were now totally adrift in a sea of
inadequacy and failure.
After his removal, two of Iron’s
former players were given the keys to the program. First, Anthony Bonner, Irons’ best-known
former Vashon player, a superstar at St. Louis University and a long time NBA
regular took over the Wolverines in 2006. He resigned mid-season in 2009.
DeAndre Davis, a resource police officer at Vashon and a 1992 graduate, sat in
the head coaches’ seat through the 2015 season. Neither was able to keep Vashon
at the level anywhere close to the lofty perch of the Floyd Irons’ years.
During the tenure of both coaches, most seasons the once might “V” finished
with a very un-Vashon like record of below .500.
In the fall of 2015, a new coach
with a familiar name was hired to restore the Wolverines. Tony Irons, son of
Floyd Irons, picked up his whistle and began the rebuilding job. Oedipus
himself never faced a paternal situational relationship ripe with such
complexities.
It didn’t take long for the young
coach and Vashon to storm back into the limelight. In both 2016 and 2017, Vashon and its new
coach cut down state championship nets.
The father didn't tell the son
how to coach, he didn’t need too, his son had spent his youth watching him do
it. Nine years after his father’s dismissal, 31-year-old Tony now occupied his
dad’s old office. He had a daunting legacy to fill under the shadow of a man
who had won 802 games and 10 state championships over a 33-years-time span. But
even those numbers drew scrutiny. MSHSAA had ordered Vashon to vacate five of
the state championships and ten years of wins by the Wolverines, due to
eligibility violations by the senior Irons uncovered by the Riverfront Times
investigation.
Upon taking a job with an obvious
slippery slope, Tony Irons shared he had never thought of following in his
father’s large footsteps. “It's
definitely kind of a strange feeling. It's weird being in the building in general,”
Tony told the Post- Dispatch. “Seeing him spend all those years at Vashon, I
honestly didn't think I'd be here. I think God has a plan for everybody so this
might be the plan.”
“There's been pressure on me
since I was a kid playing high school basketball. That's one thing I know I'm
never going to be able to shake. It's not a bad thing, necessarily,” Irons told
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “When you look at people that have an impact on
people's lives and had a lot of success, that's something that just comes with
the territory. The only pressure dealing with my dad's last name is from
outside people.”
The younger Irons graduated from
Lutheran North High School. Ironically, upon his 2015 hiring he became the
first coach since 1974 to lead the Wolverines who was not a graduate of Vashon.
That was the season when his dad took
over from Ron Coleman. Tony played four years for the College of the Ozarks in
Branson, MO and then interned as a graduate assistant at C of O. In 2009, he
was hired as a physical education teacher and a basketball coach at St. Louis’
Imagine College Prep, a charter school and not a part of the SLPS. His second
and third teams in 2010 and 2011 won back-to-back district championships. In
2012, Irons lead his team to a fourth-place finish in the state’s Class 4 state
tournament.
After the 2012 season, due to
poor academic performance, the Imagine schools were closed. The bulk of the displaced Imagine high school
students enrolled at Madison Prep, a new school created by the SLPS to facilitate
the now school-less former Imagine Prep students. All of Irons returning
players from Imagine enrolled at Madison. It was not a surprise to anyone when
Tony Irons was then hired to coach Madison and its brand-new basketball
program.
The “expansion” Bears, in their
first year of existence, won the 2013 Class 3 state championship. So much for
the importance of tradition. Madison finished fourth in the state tournament in
both 2014 and 2015. In the spring of 2015, the SLPS, once again due to academic
deficiencies, closed Madison Prep. In the three years of its existence, the
Madison Prep Bears qualified for three state final fours.
All nine returning Madison
players enrolled at Vashon and Tony Irons was hired to be their coach. In the
words of St. Louis great Yogi Berra, it was “Deja Vu all over again.” For some,
it would be their third high school in four years of a basketball induced
vagabonding journey as they followed their pied piper, Tony Irons.
The younger Irons’ Vashon tenure
got off to late start as he was suspended by MSHSAA for the first five games on
the schedule of his inaugural season. The previous March, after Irons’ Madison
Prep team was defeated 58-50 in the Class 3 third-place game, Madison players
violated sportsmanship decorum by leaving the floor before the completion of the awards ceremony
presenting the medals and trophy to the winning team. Tony explained that he
had left the floor early with a pressing need to find a restroom immediately
after the completion of the overtime contest and his players had innocently and
with no malice intended, followed him. MSHSAA didn’t buy it. The young coach
took the high road, telling the press, “at the end of the day, I'm the leader
of the program.” If MSHSAA, as some Vashon backers accused the state board of
doing, was sending a message to the young Irons with such a strong punishment,
Irons didn’t take the bait. Instead, his muted resignation to and acceptance of
the suspension was seen by many as a statement to show he was his own man who
would do things his own way.
Irons returning Vashon to the
elite levels of the state’s best programs didn’t take long. With his roster
from Madison transferring en masse with him to the Cass Avenue school, his
first two teams at Vashon, in March 2016 and March 2017, won state titles. They
repeated again in 2019. At 33 years of age, Tony Irons has already won five
MSHSAA state basketball championship trophies. Ironically, five is the same
number MSHSAA stripped from his dad’s Vashon tenure. Has the slate now been
wiped clean, the books balanced?
How did Tony Irons, after a
decade of Vashon mediocrity, churn out state champions in his first two seasons
at Vashon, when his two predecessors’ teams were at best, average? There were
two opposite schools of thought but both subscribed to the cliché that the
fruit does not fall far from the tree.
Irons supporters gave credit to genetics. Even Floyd Irons’ critics
never questioned his ability to coach a team. They did question if he played by
the rules to get the level of talent he attracted year after year to the
inner-city school. Now, those same critics of Floyd pointed to the
unprecedented influx of high- level talent that followed the son wherever he
went. Conversely, as they had for Irons Sr., Vashon fans defensively pointed
out that what the public school was doing was no different than the city
players who had fled for years the PHL to suburban and private schools who won
state title after state title with stockpiled talent stolen from the city
schools.
Tony Irons from the beginning of
his coaching career at Imagine Prep portrayed the stoicism of a cool and
collected young coach with no concerns about what outsiders thought. “I look at
it as an opportunity to help kids and an opportunity to do what I love. That's
the most important part of it,” Irons, Jr.
said. “I love the game of basketball. I can't see myself doing anything
without it. It's been good to me. It's been good to a lot of my friends. I've
been around basketball since I was a baby. The thought of doing anything
outside of basketball is crazy. I'm blessed. I get to do what I want to
do."
The son always knew his dad was
something special. Son never played for his dad, graduating from the smaller
and less demanding basketball program at nearby Lutheran North. The son stands
5’8”. Dad never backs down from a good fight as a coach, but as a father he
didn’t need the pressure of a blood connection competing for playing time on
one of the nation’s top programs. The son just wanted to play basketball, never
thought about someday becoming a coach; let alone reestablishing the swag at a
school where his dad’s name is still a city- wide lightning rod for passion and
scrutiny. Son knew early in life that his dad cut a wide swath of respect and
fear. Many competed with him for his father’s approval. The two have walked off the big court several
times with the state championship trophy in tow. First, ten times as coach and
son. Now, five times and counting as coach and father.
Dad’s reputation was one who
could take a kid with a questionable attitude and character and bend him to mesh
to the discipline membership on a Vashon team demanded. It was the allure and
the aura of playing for Floyd and Vashon that caused a kid who may have
struggled with discipline to conform to the coach’s unbending demands. The young men who have made Vashon the top
program in the history of the state have often carried the weight of the
streets with them. Some as adults have fallen to unlawful behavior leading to
incarceration. Several have died young. Some have made it out. But when the game
lights came on during the Floyd Irons years, egos at the “V” were checked at
the gym doors. The reputation of Vashon was never glitzy or inner-city thuggish
but one of old school tough guys— lean and hungry underrated workmanlike role
players who battled from the heart, equal parts of anger and pride. Nobody
under Floyd strove to “Be Like Mike.” When the center jump ball went up, Chuck
Taylor high top canvas fit better the workman like labor of play on the floor
than Air Jordans. The “V” hated to lose.
Style points didn’t matter. Bloody elbows along with skinned and scabbed knees
did. Once at Vashon it was the Irons way. It is again.
In March 2019, the widely
recognized top two high school basketball teams in the state of Missouri meet
in a state quarterfinal match up; Vashon vs. St. Louis Trinity. For a spectator
who had been away for a while, it is like stepping into a 20-year time warp.
The “V” was back, ready to roll.
The Wolverines, in their stylish
blue Nike logoed uniforms enter confidently, chanting in tune with their
follower’s erythematic warm up motivation verse, setting the tone for their
take no prisoners on court persona. When the game begins, their dominance
swallows up the entire arena. They defend like maniacs. They use a freakish mixture
of size, speed, strength, and most important desire to jump to a 12-0 lead. It
is a basketball clinic, old school style; dependent as much on back door basket
cuts as two-handed slam dunks. There are plenty of both. The raw intensity of
Vashon takes the breadth right out of Trinity and its large crowd. For those who understand the cyclical beauty
of the game of basketball, the son on this day paints the same level of a
masterpiece on a canvas disguised as a basketball court as once did his famous father.
Vashon does not intimidate as
individuals, they do so as a team. They do not showcase individual talent – and
they have several – they showcase instead impeccable and unselfish team play.
They block out – Trinity’s highly regarded 7-foot post player is a non-factor -
they rotate on defense, they run a disciplined multi-pass half-court offense
and they fill lanes on the offensive break in all out sprints. They make the
extra pass to find the open man and they seldom take a bad shot. One
questionable shot by a Wolverine who in the first half pulled the trigger on a
three-point shot before rebounding teammates were in position resulted in the
shooter immediately snapping his head to his coach, who was prowling the
sideline, with a nod of recognition. The coach nodded back. No need for verbal
cues.
But back to the two-ton elephant
in the room that is always lurking: how has Vashon amassed an arsenal of hoop
talents so very quickly, flying in the face of a system that winks at
non-compliance of its own by-laws that repudiates recruiting? Answer: the same
way Trinity has and the same way the white private schools in the county have
for years. Can son coach or is he just the benefactor of a talented roster
built under a dubious cloud of recruiting? Answers: Perhaps to the latter and a
double yes to the former. In 2019, thirty-three-year-old Tony Irons is a proven
coach who does it his own way. The sky is his limit.
How will it end? Regardless of
how, the son has made the dad proud. It is a twisted and complicated past
between the Irons coaches (Floyd and Tony), the Vashon community and St. Louis
area basketball. Now, the son has fully and voluntarily interjected himself
into the brew. Irons, Sr. was never the type of father to hold his son’s hand.
He is the type who will have his son’s back. Dad attends most Vashon practices
and games. He sits alone, his entourage from the glory days of long ago,
dispersed. There is no question of who today leads the “V.” The son is his
own man running his own resurrected version of the hoops dynasty his dad
started building on Cass Avenue 45 years ago.
Does the son feel the yoke of
family honor to bring back the gloss to his father’s reputation? If he does, he
does not show it. Revenge is best served cold. Regardless, once again, with an
Irons back at the wheel, the “V” is ready to roll and the north side pride in
the iconic Irons’ led Vashon basketball machine has returned with a whole new
generation of passionate supporters. The basketball pride on the North Side is
back and in full force.
A father is a man who expects his
son to be as good a man as he meant to be. Within the Iron’s coaching tree, the
son is not burdened with the restoration of his father’s legacy but, more
fittingly, in 2019 is respectfully establishing his own.
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